Pelosi: GOP should ‘get back to work’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is calling on Republican leaders to summon lawmakers back to Washington and get back to work.

In a statement issued Thursday, Pelosi said there was ample work remaining to be done by the House in the final days of 2012, and that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) should stop "stonewalling" and call members back.

"The House Republican leadership has run out of excuses and out of time. Their inaction continues to threaten middle class Americans with higher taxes," she said. "With five days left before the fiscal cliff, Speaker Boehner should immediately call the House back into session to allow a vote on the Senate-passed middle-class tax cut bill that the president has said he would sign immediately."

Pelosi added that there are other legislative loose ends that the House could attend to in the year's final days, including reauthorizations of the Violence Against Women Act and the farm bill.

"There are plenty of reasons for this Do-Nothing Congress to get back to work," she said.

Boehner sent House lawmakers home for the Christmas holiday one week ago, after he failed to garner enough Republican support for his alternative tax proposal on the fiscal cliff. Since then, he has maintained that it now falls to Senate Democrats to craft a compromise package avoiding that combination of automatic spending cuts and expiring tax cuts.

House members are due to receive 48 hours notice for when they are to return to Washington, and such notice has not yet been given by Boehner.

On Wednesday, House Republican leaders issued a joint statement saying they would consider whatever legislation the Senate approves, but that the Senate first must send something over.

"If the Senate will not approve and send [House-passed bills] to the president to be signed into law in their current form, they must be amended and returned to the House. Once this has occurred, the House will then consider whether to accept the bills as amended, or to send them back to the Senate with additional amendments," the statement read. "The House will take this action on whatever the Senate can pass, but the Senate first must act."

President Obama and the Senate returned to the Washington on Thursday. GOP Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) said Thursday that President Obama is offering a proposal to the Senate that would prevent the tax hikes and spending cuts.

A Boehner spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Pelosi's request to call House members back immediately.